The agreement will see the growing Irish company enter the new markets of Australia and New Zealand and strengthen its presence in the UK.

‘We’ve had a really strong start to 2019 after our most successful year yet. This agreement will only help strengthen our position further’– COLMAN WALSH

Established in 2013 by veteran UX designer Colman Walsh, the UXDI is a profitable Irish business employing 10 people in its Dublin offices.

Powering the UX revolution

“The partnership both enhances and opens up some important markets for us,” Walsh said.

“We’ve had a really strong start to 2019 after our most successful year yet. This agreement will only help strengthen our position further.”

The company was initially focused on closing the rapidly expanding UX skills gap in Ireland and now educates students globally, with 73pc of its sales coming from abroad.

An industry advisory council helps steer the UXDI’s programmes. It consists of a mix of tech giants, international recruitment firms, and award-winning UX consultancies including Mastercard, SAP, Dell, RaboDirect and Morgan McKinley.

Currently, 30pc of revenue for the UXDI comes from the UK, with Ireland, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany its other key territories to date.

Learning People is one of the UK’s leading online education providers, producing 3,000 graduates a year. It offers a range of courses across project management, IT, digital marketing and cybersecurity.

“Our mission is to make tech careers simple by delivering up-to-date training, aligned to what employers are looking for. We offer online career education, sourcing the best training available across IT and project management,” said Patrick Aylmer, CEO of Learning People.

UX design helps organisations make better-quality digital products, so it unsurprisingly features among the top hard skills companies need most in 2019, as identified by LinkedIn.

An estimated 580,000 UX designers are needed in the tech industry in the EMEA alone by 2024, with the market estimated to be worth €1.5bn by 2021.